Meijer issued an apology statement Wednesday after bodycam video of an employee’s arrest at an Ohio store went viral.
The footage was from an incident that took place in 2024 but recently began making the rounds on social media.
In the video, an officer responds to a store in Seven Hills, Ohio, for a report of a theft of $110, which was accumulated from what a manager described as things like chicken tender orders that went unpaid over a span of three months.
According to Michigan Live, the employee was a 19-year-old deli worker with autism.
The employee is heard telling the officer that he had forgotten his wallet a few times for his lunch and when he returned for his next shift he said he forgot to pay it back or didn’t know who to speak to.
At one point, the employee was handcuffed, taken out of the store and transported to the police station.
Video of the arrest was recently shared on social media, sparking outrage from some and calls to boycott Meijer.
A GoFundMe page that had been created to help with the employee’s legal fees has since been taken down, however.
In its statement, Meijer, which is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, acknowledged “there has been a lot of recent conversation” about the incident ” involving a former employee.”
“We take this very seriously and recognize that the situation should have been handled differently,” the statement, which was posted to the company’s Facebook page, read. “Earlier this year, we implemented a new procedure to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We’ve learned a great deal from this experience. We hold ourselves to a higher standard and are committed to making sure our actions reflect how we want to treat other other.”
Details on what those measures included weren’t immediately released.
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